Toolkit expanded to address wider gender pay gaps

Today the Minister for Women announced that the Gender Pay Gap Toolkit has been expanded to include tools for calculating gender-ethnicity and gender-disability pay gaps. It also features new resources for small to medium sized businesses and a guide to support young women to confidently discuss pay at work.

New Zealand’s national gender pay gap has narrowed in recent years, dropping from 8.2% in 2024 to 5.2% in 2025.  

While this progress is encouraging, we need to look further. Wāhine Māori, Pacific women, women from ethnic communities, and disabled women continue to experience significantly higher pay gaps.  

Pacific women face the largest gap at 15.8%, followed by wāhine Māori at 12%, and Asian women at 10.2%.  For disabled women, the gap compared to all men is 14.8%, and even when compared to disabled men, it remains high at 9.6%—well above the national average. 

The expanded toolkit was developed in partnership with business and with the support of the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women (NACEW), reflecting the shared commitment across the private and public sectors to take action on gender pay gaps and create fairer workplaces for all. 

It provides clear guidance on how to measure and interpret gender pay gaps, with practical advice on collecting data, analysing results, and reporting actions. It highlights the links between different types of gender pay gaps, helping organisations to identify overlapping barriers and focus their effort where it will have the greatest impact.

For small and medium-sized businesses, the toolkit now includes a dedicated resource, developed with input from business.  This guidance recognises that SMEs face different constraints to larger organisations and provides practical, tailored steps they can take to measure and address their gender pay gaps. 

The Ministry acknowledges former Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Dr Karanina Sumeo, who led engagement with communities to understand perspectives on ethnicity-pay gaps, as well as the YWCA Auckland and the community of young women who helped develop this comprehensive package. 

Thank you to the many New Zealand businesses that helped develop these resources and are leading the way by voluntarily measuring pay gaps, reporting data and implementing policies to ensure fairness for all. 

The expanded gender pay gap toolkit is available on the Ministry website here.